Analysis - Blog Posts

Something I’ve only occasionally seen mentioned is how Cauldron capes still have a degree of irony between their power and their trauma

Take Coil. While moments away from being rescued from Nilbog’s monsters, he is faced with a split-second choice: to kill his superior officer or to not. He didn’t know which was the right call, whether it was possible for them both to survive or whether letting his superior live would have doomed them both. And so, he made his choice, and was left to deal with the consequences of it. And then he drinks a vial and is given the ability to delay the making of any such decisions, until the consequences were known.

Or Battery. She wants powers to take down Madcap, and gets powers that operate similarly to his but perform better. Except, of course, only for a handful of moments, leaving her ultimately worse off than him. She loses to him 7 times, and only wins on the 8th because Legend is there

Actually maybe Wildbow’s tendency to issue poorly thought out proclamations about his stories to win arguments with his fans is a good thing, as it forcibly introduces otherwise naive readers to the idea of the death of the author

The thing with the epilogue, is that in 30.7 when Contessa asks whether Taylor was a monster, a bully, or whether she “was really a hero” I took it to mean that her decision on whether to save Taylor or not was based, at least partially, on the answer to that question. If this is accepted, then the answer to whether the epilogue is real is also the answer to whether she was ultimately a monster or a hero and vice versa.

whats the general consensus on wormblr about what happened to taylor? i dont see people talk about the final chapter very much, but when they do it seems they usually take the text at face value, that taylor is powerless and on earth aleph (my preferred interpretation). but elsewhere on the internet people discuss the wog more, and a lot more people seem to believe she died or is in a coma or something other than stuck on aleph.

Thinkin’ About Alexandria

An important thing to keep in mind about Alexandria, I think, is that she (and the rest of Cauldron’s inner circle) have been sticking like glue to an organizational schema she developed when she was fifteen, using power-assisted cognition but the life-skills, worldview and experience of a fifteen year old; I think this goes a long way towards explaining why her mindset was finding the most efficient way to martially oppose villains instead of, say, finding a way to financially disincentivize villainy through social safety nets. (alternatively, she wanted society to be a thunderdome of sorts to get everyone trained up for gold morning, but that’s got just as many holes that could be explained by being fifteen.)

Her power answered her fear that she’d die without getting to grow and change by arresting all her biological processes and permanently locking her into her late-teens-early-twenties; she has to pretend in order to seem as old as she actually is. Her cognition is completely offloaded to her power; her brain is vulnerable, but it isn’t clear if she’s actually doing any thinking with that thing. Unmovable, unbreakable, clad in fortress imagery, sticking like glue to a specific plan, and a specific value (they’ll be alive, that’s all that matters) derived from her own root fear of death, her preference for mutation over death by cancer, which she projects onto everyone else in the world and uses to justify everything she does to them. Incredible calculative power, incredible resources, incredible martial power, and a fighting style that, to my recollection, consists of hitting the other guy until they stop moving.

So, you know, conclusion number one that I’m drawing from all of this is that Alexandria is Taylor with all the world’s resources at her back and no one to ever tell her no. Conclusion two is that Alexandria is subtly in the same kind of power-induced arrested development as Contessa; she’s got the brains and the brawn to think up and execute bad plans perfectly, she faces no criticism or scrutiny, she (usually) faces no consequences. She’s not “stand-on-a-beach-for-three-days-in-a-stupor” levels of brainscorched by her power but there’s a real degree to which I read the training wheels as never having come off with her. I get a vibe of R/Iamverysmart permeating Cauldron’s set-up and self-assuredness, and this is part of why.

Conclusion three (the big obvious one) is that she’s a metaphor for institutional inertia. When she dies and the Protectorate uses her as a scapegoat for everything that’s wrong with them it’s very obviously self-serving but it’s also not, like. Incorrect. She’s a synecdoche for everything wrong with the system. Rigid, inflexible, callous, arguably necessary but nearly impossible to remove or change or challenge.

And then she gets replaced by a guy whose whole schtick is that he can mix and match the best properties of wildly different component elements on the fly to create the best possible response to any problem.

Thinkin’ About Cauldron

I’m aware of the way it breaks some people’s suspension of disbelief, and I’m aware that it comes across as silly or incompetent to many, but it is deeply, deeply important to me on a thematic level that Cauldron is tiny. The tinyness is what makes them a functional foil to Taylor; you spend the whole book thinking that this is just an escalation of the problems Taylor has with Monolithic authority, and then the curtain is pulled back and you realize that the “Monolithic authority” is actually just six or seven people who are on a first name basis with each other, using their top-tier information-gathering and coordination-based powers as a force multiplier to get around their small numbers as they unilaterally seized control. (Hey, sorta like the Undersiders.)

And, furthermore, their tinyness is a stand-out example of the kind of coordination problems the book has been examining the whole time- Cauldron should be bigger, the inner circle should have more people in it, and the fact that they’ve expanded so slowly, from two to seven-ish full members, with so much of their inner circle not even having the full picture of the threat they’re up against, is deeply indicative of their wagon-circling Atlas Complex. It has to be them, they have to do it alone, or they are going to be found out and crushed. 

And to be fair, they aren’t actually wrong in their assessment that they’ll be found out and crushed if they aren’t extremely careful about who they bring into the loop; overlooking the remaining entity entirely, Legend’s concern that the governments would try and coopt the power-granting process is, like. Correct. That is a thing that would happen, given the number of wormverse groups already trying to do that in some form. Siberian bit them in the ass, The Dealer bit them in the ass, and a big part of Ward is the multi-directional slapfight over the remaining Cauldron infrastructure that starts up as soon as it isn’t in a position to defend itself anymore.

 There’s a real chicken-and-egg thing going on here, where it’s not clear if their paranoia is warranted given how other power players in the setting tend to behave, or if other power players in the setting behave the way they do downstream from Cauldron’s paranoia, manipulation and compartmentalization. A recurring theme with Worm is that keeping secrets and holding back resources is going to lead to terrible things happening even if keeping those secrets was a reasonable decision with the information you had available to you. You see this with Phir Se, with the Echidna fight, with the politicking over Khonsu. Cauldron is just, like, the epitome of that Morton’s Fork- be honest and open, and potentially lose everything, or, you know, be Cauldron, with all that entails.

Now a part of me does feel pity and grief for the Nowhere King/Elk/General, but on the other hand I see the Mysterious Woman kill him and I’m like;

This lady didn’t ask for this. She was only ever kind to the Elktaur and his components, but then had to deal with the fallout of them fighting over her without much, if any, regards to what the Woman wanted. A part of me is sad for the Elk, but a part of me notes that it’s kind of possessive how he mostly throws a pity party for himself and doesn’t seem to care that his beloved is happy. And the General... Well? He speaks for himself.

The Mysterious Woman saw two worlds get ravaged, countless people died, because these two men couldn’t agree over her. And she no doubt blamed herself, shouldered the burden for their immaturity, hence why her final song evokes the ‘poison’ they’d fed her. She had little to no agency in this mess, yet was the centerpiece of it as a trophy the Nowhere King and General were fighting over; Civilizations were ravaged by the Nowhere King, while the General let people die so he could be with the Woman when she clearly didn’t want to prioritize their relationship over lives.

So to see the Mysterious Woman acknowledge her pain so she can absolve herself of that unfair guilt placed upon her... Realize it’s not her fault, the Elktaur and his halves made their decision? Genuinely cathartic. The Mysterious Woman can finally be free of the burden of their possessive love that killed and destroyed, and not treat this tragedy as her responsibility, but simply a problem to be dealt with. She would’ve loved him regardless, it really is just HIS fault.

From a meta standpoint, I have to wonder if this is Megan Nicole Dong’s discussion of how women are treated in media. How in stories like these, the women’s feelings and agency in these back and forth conflict between their potential lovers is often overlooked, swept aside, because the pain and angst of the men is more important. What about the woman, what does she think and feel and want?

Not to mention the sexist tendency of writers and web fandom to put the onus on the woman for the man’s mistakes- To act like she’s responsible for him/them, she’s supposed to take care of and do everything in her power to make him okay, to ‘fix’ him. It’s her fault for not taking care of this grown man and her fault that the man caused this damage, and not... The man’s fault for choosing to do all this because she doesn’t owe him anything. If anything he owes HER, we see how the Mysterious Woman went out of her way to be kind to this dude and give him recognition!

So the Woman mourns the Elktaur, the love they could’ve had... But ultimately, she finally absolves herself and recognizes that this is his fault. She’s not beholden to him, she doesn’t owe him love. And while she wishes he hadn’t been like this... In the end, HE was, and she and so many others had to deal with the fallout of it. And the Mysterious Woman blamed herself, because if only she’d done more or been kinder...!

So yeah, I think this whole arc was a bit of a meta commentary on sexism and how women are tossed around as trophies to be won with no agency, while simultaneously given the onus of being responsible for the feelings and thus actions of the men who yearn for them. This backstory is possibly a discussion on how these messages in media can harm and damage women watching them, who feel like it’s up to them to ‘fix’ toxic people, because who else will?

And then that applies to just about any toxic and possessive relationship... Like there’s something rather victim-blaming and gaslighting when the Nowhere King tells the Woman that he forgives her, as if she caused this! Maybe it was in reference to sealing him away, but she only did that because HE tried to kill everyone; “I did this for you,” he claims. But did she ask for it? Is it her fault that he chose to do this when she never asked, and is it her fault for choosing to reject it, when such humble gifts are meant to be unconditional and prepared for rejection?

It almost implies as if it’s the Woman’s fault for making things more difficult and bloody than they need to be, by not accepting this ‘gift’, and rendering the Nowhere King’s efforts and sacrifices ‘meaningless’. As if this violence only became senseless because the Woman didn’t justify it by accepting the gift. As if these deaths that could’ve been a necessary loss by accomplishing something were instead wasted by her, because the Woman didn’t want to go through with it and take the final step.

All in all, she did the right thing. The Mysterious Woman practiced some self-care by smashing Elktaur’s head in, taking a moment to mourn and pity but also take out some much-deserved anger; I’d argue it’s a very progressive, feminist storyline and victory for her! And honestly, I look forward to her friendship with the Beartaur, of all people- Yeah they sass one another but they’re actually relatively honest and open with each other. There’s more communication with these two over their issues than there’s ever been between the Woman and Elktaur, and I think about that a lot.

It’s funny, because I was wondering what their relationship was like, if the Beartaur moved into the Woman’s cave and she had to sneak back in to make additions to the mural, but no! It’s a totally open and relatively mutual arrangement between these two, and I love that weird yet human dynamic where these two bicker as roommates in Season 2.

Weird take incoming, but the Beartaur is already proving himself to be a better romantic candidate than the Elktaur, and if the Mysterious Woman ever makes room for romance in her heart again, he’s arguably the best and maybe only option she has! And yet the Beartaur would never act entitled to her love, all he asks is for the Mysterious Woman to be a cleaner roommate which is... A totally fair demand let’s be real. This might be just HIS cave and he lets her live there in exchange for lore.

And it’s kind of ironic but really fitting that this shlubby nerd of a dude who is a borderline basement dweller is like. A better companion to the Mysterious Woman, romantically or platonically. Simply because he never acts entitled to her love and just talks and communicates with her on the same level, while the Elktaur doesn’t.

Yeah the Beartaur is willing to glue live people but it’s because he knows what he wants and isn’t indecisive about it. He’s not a Nice Guy like Elktaur who is swimming in self-doubt, dude chooses to glue people because they make the best figurines, what about it? It’s not like this is because of some self-loathing or personal pity party, he is who he is, and that self-acceptance and communication is kind of why ‘jerks’ like him are preferred by women. The Beartaur owns who he is and will actually talk to the Mysterious Woman, and complain not over love he’s owed but just hygiene.

TL;DR There’s something very feminist, both in a meta and in-universe standpoint, about the Mysterious Woman reclaiming her agency and absolving herself to kill the Elktaur, and finally be rid of his possessive and destructive love that she blamed herself for. She’s finally free now, to live and breathe and love -herself and others- without guilt. And while it’s so tragic and unfair that it’s up to her to finish this and kill the Elktaur, even if it’s not her fault, at least the Woman finally got over if.

(And ftr I don’t hate Elktaur or his components. Well except maybe the General. I’m very emo over him/them too.)

Why do you ship BoButter — not hating! I just haven’t seen it as much!

hi! that's alright, i will try to explain my position

how should i put this... i like them as a couple more not because they had a lot of interactions throughout the show, but rather because of their potential. they are my favorite characters - they're both incredibly well-written - and i also like them individually, independently of each other, and how they could grow up being in a relationship is a very interesting topic to me

so here's the reason: they work well together. why? i'm planning to make a post about this one day, so for now i'll try to be brief:

- on a superficial level they differ, but if you look deeper, you realize that they are very similar (both had acting careers, similar coping mechanisms, same age and gender). they would understand one another well, without being completely identical to each other and thus living in a kind of echo chamber (as in the case of todd and pb f. e.)

- at the same time their differences are not as critical as diane and pb had, and if they really tried to understand their partner, they would truly complement, not suppress each other

that's why by the way their relationship is possible only after the end of the series (aus don't count), where both characters have gone through a long path of growth and, finally, are ready to build healthy friendship, which after a while could turn into something more

for instance: bojack would become more independent with mr peanutbutter, as he would have to solve his problems himself because pb, due to his forgetfulness and carelessness, simply would not be able to do it for him, as princess carolyn did; mr peanutbutter, in turn, would not have to suppress the desire to make big gifts since bojack just would not mind this. he also wouldn't finally have a partner who was much younger than him. and so on

- and. imho bojack wouldn't simply be able to build healthy equal relationships with women because of his mommy issues lol. he's too old to completely rebuild his mindset, and well... i can imagine post-canon!bojack being actually happy and not self-destructive only in a relationship with a man or being single at all. but that's just me

and yes, they certainly wouldn't fix each other. i rather see it this way: they go through their personal growth, supporting each other and becoming good friends. in turn, a strong closeness and a huge common history, as well as the growing sympathy in general, contributes to the emergence of romantic feelings and one of them ends up confessing to the other, and that's where they start dating.

i also get that they could just remain friends as well, and that would also be great, but being romantic partners, in my opinion, would further expand their potential and gain personal growth as characters. they have every chance of becoming great partners for each other for the rest of their lives (which is not very long)

so yeah, i myself can't say that there were many interactions between them in the show, but i rather like their potential and the dynamics of their relationship. i hope i answered your question anon!

Amen! 🙏

People who say "Caitlyn did the most for the underground by dismantling shimmer and fighting chembarons" makes me laugh so much for two reasons

1. The show establishes multiple times that children work for the chembarons, so they most definitely got caught in the grey. But the show also establishes, through characters like Heenot, that there aren't exactly a lot of job opportunities in Zaun that don't involve the chembarons as they've monopolised most of Zaun's industries. Its something that Caitlyn acknowledges herself when having her leg stitched up by her dad ("choosing between a kingpin and a gov that doesnt give a shit") So I don't see how gassing and then imprisoning these people for life is "helping". She also straight up cocks her gun at unarmed, sickly workers so, no, she really dngaf ab helping

2. I don't blame people for forgetting this one because the show forgets it too, but shimmer is the only form of medicine (as far as we know) that exists in Zaun. Other than Singed, the show doesn't portray the undercity as having any doctors. Every time a character in Zaun is hurt fatally, they use shimmer to heal them. Caitlyn herself knows this, as she gets shimmer for Vi in S1. Ironically, much like in real life, the criminalisation of shimmer would've most likely harmed the underground more than the drug trade itself. Especially after, oh, i don't know, GASSING A CITY WITH A GAS THAT HAS DISABALED PEOPLE PRIOR.

In conclusion, kukluxkirraman (not u switch!Caitie ily) isn't shit and jinx should've hit the towers again

"Anakin wouldn't do that"

"He was the greatest Jedi ever how would he turn to the dark side"

"There's still hope in him"

"There's still good in him"

Star wars makes a point of establishing how despite genocide and the conquering of worlds Anakin can still somehow be a good person. Yet what I find fascinating from a feminist perspective is these are very similar words to how women's abusers are excused. Even Padme's last words being that Anakin has good in him is so eerily similar to how abused women go back to their husbands out of the misguided beliefs that the abuse is not who their partner truly is.

Anakin Skywalker is the epitome of how men can do the most heinous of deeds and find redemption because society won't stop looking for the good in them

fuck, u so right

Dang it guys

we only ever talked about HALF of why these scenes were a big deal, like I just realized this today and my heart is going insane.

It’s not just that Crowley’s pissed at Gabriel for treating who he thinks as Aziraphale this way, the last thing he says to the people about to kill him is a benign and peaceful wish to see them again.

And like- this is Crowley trying to replicate Aziraphale to a T. So he legitimately just sees him as this endless well of compassion, someone who is always warm and accepting. It’s not just their friendship throughout the years, he remembers Aziraphale’s kindness on the Eastern Gate. When the angel had absolutely no reason to trust this random demon who just slithered up next to him. Crowley knows that he’s loved. Maybe not like that quite yet (although he’d be very wrong), but he knows that around his friend he’s always welcome and safe.

And Aziraphale?

Well he just thinks Crowley’s the coolest fucker alive, like he is laying it in THICK and enjoying every second. Listen to that charisma, look at that smirk. These are traits that are typically only appreciated in the context of how good it makes Crowley at tempting, a job he hates. But Aziraphale doesn’t see someone manipulative or regard this persona as signs of his “demonic nature”, he just sees Crowley. Someone charming, fun loving, and cute.

This is when we get to know precisely why they love each other, what exactly they see in the other.

I present to you, my very (crappy) analysis of my very own Time Travel Sephiroth theory (with a poorly drawn timeline).

This is just theory by this point but I believe the Sephiroth that we saw in Chapter 18 is actually the Original Sephiroth who traveled back in time to reshape destiny. As a defense mechanism the planet summons the Whispers to make sure fate stays on track. The Whispers are confirmed to be connected to the threads of space and time. This explains the visions of the future that the party and other people see, because Sephiroth time traveling altered the threads that the Whispers are connected to.

Oh, look, what's that?

That is #quality stuff

one of many reasons castiel spent the first year of knowing dean trying not to strangle him: dean’s weird little winchester-only dialect

i’m fucking obsessed with this right now, so buckle in for a meta. a cool fun (horrible) thing about dean’s dialogue is that a good 90% of what comes out of his mouth is:

a pop culture reference (“you’re just gonna take some divine bong hit, and shazam, you’re roma downey?”)

references to real life phenomenon (“i don’t wanna wake up missing a kidney in a bathtub full of ice” “try new mexico, i hear he’s on a tortilla”)

these also often take the form of nicknames, and dean has a tendency to give people nicknames in general or call them something besides their given name, whether it’s affectionate or rude (“easy there, van damme” “so i’m girl interrupted” furthermore castiel = cas, ezekiel = zeke, etc, see also frequent use of “chucklehead” “asshat” and on the nicer/endearments end “buddy” “pal” “sunshine” etc)

an idiom (“a snowball’s chance” “if it smells like a duck…”)

slang (“drinking the koolaid” “jonesing for some hooch” not to mention the literal endless amount of words dean uses to refer to killing - gank, waste, juice, ice, etc)

a metaphor (“power up your batteries” “fly me back to my page on the calendar”)

a euphemism (“cloud seeding” “i’d have given you an hour alone with her first”)

sarcasm (his habit of replying “peachy” or “super” when asked how he is)

wordplay (see: the entire “vampirate” and “werepire” debacles)

completely nonsensical (guessing what happened to a magical artifact: “it was dug up by tomb raiders? it was seized by the king of the dead by warlords?”)

said at lightning speed - if you pay attention, dean actually talks a LOT, usually a mile a minute (this makes me feel a way when you recall his year of mutism at age 4 but that’s another post)

slang IN ANOTHER LANGUAGE (casual usage of “guano,” etc)

a lie, a deflection, a joke, etc

or worse, something dean’s NOT saying, deliberately, because he’s one of the most repressed people on earth

the end result of all this being:

dean winchester is utterly infuckingcomprehensible. 

think about this. there’s an ENTIRE SECTION on EVERY SINGLE EPISODE PAGE of the spn wiki devoted to JUST explaining dean’s pop culture references, because the average viewer won’t have seen everything he’s talking about either. they have a whole page for this called “hunter’s lingo,” but honestly, it’s not all hunters, just sam and dean’s fucking batshit communication style. even i don’t understand dean half the time. SAM gets it, sam speaks it back to dean a lot in the early seasons, but that’s because sam and dean are 1. practically two halves of the same person 2. FREAKS. every time we get an episode that involves outsider POV is devoted to them going “what the fuck is WRONG with them?”

enter castiel. technically speaking, the show implies that angels are omnilingual. castiel should understand every language known to man, but knowing the meaning of words doesn’t help him understand the following:

pop culture references

references to real life phenomenon

nicknames

idioms

slang

metaphors

euphemisms

sarcasm

wordplay

you get the idea.

listen to me. look me in the eyes. castiel cannot understand a single fucking word that comes out of dean’s mouth. my guy laid a hand on dean winchester in hell and immediately fell in love with him and has no fucking idea what he’s talking about ever. because not only is dean winchester’s way of speaking CLINICALLY insane, and sometimes incomprehensible even to other human beings who are not sam, castiel is an angel, and someone prone to taking things even more literally than other angels do

go back and watch and watch seasons 4-5 especially. the reason cas does so much squinting and head tilting is because every time dean opens his mouth castiel has to open up his mental “dean winchester dictionary” and translate entire paragraphs on the fly, because again, dean never shuts up!

what makes this extra hilarious to me is this gem:

this line is from 5.13. at this point cas has known dean for AN ENTIRE YEAR AND A HALF. what you see here is my guy SNAPPING. cas made an EFFORT in this scene. he asked who glenn close was. he’s telling dean that he can’t understand him. he is doing his level best to have a normal conversation with this guy he has a crush on and for the life of him he cannot do it (equal but opposite energy to cas blowing up the gas station and motel room in 4.01, tbh)

yes, cas can understand dean’s tone. he can use context clues, and he usually gets the general idea. and when cas DOES understand dean’s jokes, he laughs at them. the first time we ever see him smile is during their 4.07 heart-to-heart when dean says “it was a witch, not the tet offensive.” since cas has knowledge of human history, he knows what the tet offensive is; he got the joke, and he laughed.

but as far as actual dialogue goes, he consistently struggles to keep up. even after metatron gives castiel the pop culture knowledge in season 9, cas struggles to put it to put it to proper use (dean: “you wanna just walk right into the death star?” cas: “what does a fictional battle station have to do with this?”). whenever he asks dean to clarify it’s always when he’s most annoyed, like most of the time he knows it would be futile but he’s too annoyed to care. (dean: “i don’t know who’s on first, what’s on second!” cas: “what IS second???”) i’m pretty sure he spends seasons 4-6 wanting to shake dean by the shoulders and ask him why he is LIKE THIS. 

it takes cas - who, again, is omnilingual - YEARS to begin to acclimate to dean’s speech and start speaking that language back to him. it’s season 8 before we start really hearing him use slang, season 9 before he begins to understand wordplay, season 10 before he starts using pop culture references (to other angels, who immediately fail to understand him, which disappoints him immensely), and season 11 before he really gets into metaphors. i don’t remember what season he started using “yeah” instead of “yes” but i do know it took a really damn long time. 

and honestly, i don’t think cas truly got the hang of it until at least season 11-12. that’s something like 7 or 8 YEARS. it’s more than half the time they’ve known each other at the point of the series finale. 

so what’s true romance, fellas? it’s falling completely and totally in love with the most inexplicable person you will ever meet in your whole 4.5 billion year life, even though you have yet to understand a single thing he’s ever said to you. thank you for coming to my ted talk

something that stood out to me while reading sotr is just how unreliable of a narrator haymitch is, and specifically in how he views himself. he mentions how he isnt smart repeatedly, and i almost accepted that as a character trait because it’s so often said, but his actions show otherwise. he knows the repercussions of carrying lou lou while in the arena, he just doesnt care. he isnt stupid, he’s brave. “a hero is a person who fights for liberty instead of settling for comfort.”

Something i've noticed.

So recently, i've been rewatching Httyd: Rtte, and have noticed something about Heather that I wanted to comment on, even if other people have, too. While I feel that emotionally, Heather was ready to be a spy for Hiccup and the Riders, strategically, she was not for a multitude of reasons. She had been out on her own and away from people for a good period of time, and even when she had been around Hiccup and the rides in DoB (or RoB can't remember when she was introduced), her people skills were quite lacking, and she had never been in a trade where strategy and lying are quite common. On Berk, for the most part, Hiccup and the Riders were very straight forward with her. She was very guarded with her information, unlike Johann who had carefully crafted a persona to distance his actual self from Hiccup, and give information away quietly. Heather was not quiet about information that she dropped. She told them every single mission, and that itself was a huge indicator that she was the mole. Take Viggo when he's introduced in "Maces and Talons, Part 1". When I first watched the show, I didn't notice it, but coming back and watching the way that Viggo introduces himself to both Heather and Dagur (because while he may have had more suspision towards Heather, her and Dagur are still siblings, they could both be in on it) he immediately clocks in on the fact that at least one of them is lying about their allegance. "They say there are two ways to be fooled: One is to believe what isn't true, the other is to refuse to believe what is." He knows. He knows that one of them is lying. The way that he's framed, the way that he looks back at Heather and Dagur, there's an immediate sense of unease that comes with that situation, and any viewer can feel that with the music and the way that Viggo speaks. Coming back around to Heather, I believe, at least to a certain extent, that she knew that Viggo was onto her. I mean, the man took her out onto the cliffs and talked about weeding out the "wrong-doer in our midst" which is inherently a set up that neither Heather nor Hiccup realized. During Viggo and Heather's talk, I found myself paying attention to Viggo and the way he was talking to Heather. His body language is very calm and somewhat comforting given the circumstances. He puts his arm around her, and immediately is open and honest with her- at least, that's what she thinks- he calls her "my dear," and trusts her with this big mission of apparently finding out the mole, which in Heathers mind is proving to him that she's trustworthy and can handle information. He's giving her a chance to prove herself, or prove to him that she's the mole.

It's brillant, in a way- because who else besides Heather knew the information about the Flightmare? In his own words, Viggo told her to "keep it to ourselves," and Hiccup and the Riders just so happen to know exactly where they are exactly when they're coming? It was very obvious. And, if this had been played right with Hiccup and Heather, they could have avoided this situation all together. If, quite frankly, Hiccup and the riders had let Viggo have the Flightmare, they could have exponentially gained more information because, at least for a little bit, Heather had proved herself to Viggo. So, Tdlr, Viggo is the best written villain of Httyd because of the way that he critically understands people. I truly think about what would could have been if Viggo had been the one to mentor Hiccup. I know that this is probably obvious, but I did want to word vomit about it. So, uh, bye!

You could also tie in two other common tropes with the whole “Superman-esq is trying to contain all these guys” which is the whole no kill rule everyone follows and how villains constantly break out

Basically the Superman knock off purposely enforced the no kill and purposely tries to make containment not a priority so that way there’s always villains to keep the hero’s distracted so they can’t start enacting facist coups or whatever but it’s a ticking clock of hero’s getting fed up and just putting people down and villainy getting less popular until there aren’t enough villains to keep this system going and it all comes crashing down

sorry for random addition just an idea that popped into my head based around this

A few years ago, there was a thread on r/asksciencefiction where someone was fishing for a superhero story with an inverted Omni-Man dynamic, or a setting where Homelander's initial presentation is played straight- a setting where the Superman figure actually is the paragon of morality he's initially presented as, but no other superhero is- a situation where you've got one really competent true-blue hero standing head-and-shoulders in power above what's otherwise a complete nest of vipers.

Someone in the thread floated My Hero Academia; while I haven't read it, my understanding is that that's not really an accurate read of what's going on with Stain's neurosis about All-Might being the only "real hero," that the point of that arc is that Stain's got an insane and unreasonable standard and that taking an endorsement deal, while bad, isn't actually grounds for execution. My own contribution to the thread was Gail Simone's Welcome to Tranquility, where a major part of the backstory involved the faux Justice-League's Superman analogue having a little accident because he's the only one who thought they were morally obligated to go public with the secret life-extending macguffin that the rest of the team is using to enforce comic-book time on themselves and their loved ones; while only a couple members of the team are directly in on it, the rest are conveniently incurious. And Jupiter's Legacy gets tantalizingly close to this- The Utopian, a well-meaning stick-in-the-mud, ultimately gets blindsided and couped by his scheming brother who creates a superhero junta staffed by a Kingdom-Come-style glut of third-gen superheroes, who are framed as fundamentally self-interested because only came onto the scene after most of the situations you legitimately need a superhero to handle have been neutralized. (The rub, of course, is that the comic is also highly critical of the Utopian's intellectually incurious self-righteously 'apolitical' approach to superheroism- if for no other reason than that it left him in a position to get blindsided by a coup!) While Jupiter's Legacy gets the closest, all three of these are only loosely orbiting around the spirit of the original idea, and there's something really interesting there- particularly if the Superman figure isn't hopelessly naive in the same way as Utopian. Because first of all, if you're Metaman or Amazingman or whatever brand-name alias the writer goes with, and you really earnestly mean it, and you put together a team of all the other most powerful heroes on earth in order to pool your resources, and then with dawning horror you gradually begin to realize that everyone in the room besides yourself is a fascist or a con artist or abuser or any other variant of a kid with a magnifying glass eyeing that anthill called Earth- What the hell is your next move?

Do you just call the whole thing off? Can you trust that they'll actually go home if you call the whole thing off? I mean you've put the idea in their heads, are you sure that they aren't going to, like, start the Crime Syndicate in your absence? Do you stick around to try and enact containment, see if getting all of these people on a team makes them easier to keep on a leash? But that's functionally going to make you their enabler pretty quickly, right? Overlooking "should you kill them-" can you kill them? You're stronger than any individual one of them- are you stronger than all of them? The first time one of them really crosses a line in a way you can't ignore- will that be a one-on-one fight? Are they the kind of people capable of putting two-and-two together and pre-emptively ganging up on you if you push back too hard? Do you just start trying to get them killed, or keep them at each other's throats so they can't coordinate anything really nasty? Can you squeeze any positive moral utility out of them, or is that just a way to justify not doing the hard work of taking them down? There've been works where the conceit is to question the default assumption that Superman in specific would be a good person, and there've been works where the conceit is to question the default assumption that superheroes in general would be good people. Something to be done, I think, with questioning the default assumption that everyone Superman becomes professionally close to would be good, and to explore how he'd handle it if they weren't.

So I've noticed that people seem to really misunderstand Maki's dynamic with Kokichi and Korekiyo(separately)...And if anything, People get them confused with each other

The fanon portrayal of Maki and Kokichi's dynamic is that they both hate each other, Kokichi jumps at every chance he has to antagonize her and she hates him enough to jump at any chance to hurt or kill him

The fanon portrayal of Korekiyo and Maki's dynamic is that they're perfectly fine with each other, Especially because of their calm and collected personalities

When it's actually..Kind of completely backwards..

In canon, After Korekiyo finds out Maki's talent; He jumps at any opportunity to antagonize her, Knowing the rules of the game and every other participant protect him from her actually hurting him. And she antagonizes him way more in chapter three even before the murder. He's also blatantly rude to her(Actively ignoring her in conversations and then asking, "Did you say something?" or "Did you hear something?/srs), And Maki is always annoyed with him even being there

Meanwhile in canon with Maki and Kokichi, Even after her talent is revealed she's literally completely fine with him, He antagonizes her for a bit but she is always shown to just not care at all or even at some points responds calmly to him..In chapter 1, She was the only person to agree with him and didn't just assume he was up to no good like literally everyone else did..She only gets more aggressive with him when he says he killed two people for fun and that he was the mastermind. She even felt guilty about killing him even when she still thought he was a remnant of despair(After finding out he wasn't the mastermind)

Am I the only one to find it funny how the fandom got those two dynamics completely confused😭😭

You know, I think Maki actually does feel guilty about Kokichi's death.

Yes, by Ch.5 she absolutely hated him, but it was understandable. He declared himself the mastermind — person who supposedly kidnapped forced everyone to kill each other. He took Kaito — the most important person for Maki in this game — hostage. He mocked Gonta after his death. He told everyone that he enjoyed their suffering, laughing like madman. Throughout all the game, he accused and insulted Maki of being an assassin. And finally, the last straw was the fake memories that he also helped Junko start wars and cause destruction. This all led to her snapping and trying to kill him.

And Maki never enjoyed killing. She was forced to become an assassin and only stayed for the safety and wellbeing of children in the orphanage she grew up in. She really wanted to prove the group. that she could be trusted. She even told this to Kokichi after the 3rd trial.

Yes, at the end of the fifth trial she told Kaito that he shouldn't have agreed to Kokichi's plan and it would have been better for Ouma to just die. But at that moment she was desperate, hurt and scared that Kaito would be executed. Naturally she would be mad at Kokichi.

But in Chapter 6, she was the one who volunteered to search Kokichi's room to find any clues that could help end the game. If she didn't care at all, she would not offer to search there. I think part of her also wanted to find some kind of confirmation that he really was an asshole who absolutely deserved to die. Or, on the contrary, confirmation that he really did try to help them. Just anything to form her own final opinion about him.

And also that moment during the Final Trial when Tsumugi, the real Mastermind, revealed that those memories, that finally pushed her to try to kill him, weren't real. Maki sounds shocked and horrified at that. Because those memories were the reason that pushed her to try to murder him. And if they were fake, that means she did all that for nothing. She broke her unspoken promise to Kaito, and that resulted in Momota and Ouma both dying. And all of it was because of a lie.

It feels to me that she does feel guilty for both Kaito's death and Kokichi's death, because it was her actions that partially led to everything ending that way. I think no matter how she feels about Kokichi, she regrets what she did.

In various places -- here, the bird app, even YouTube comments -- I keep running into people with some variation of the same question:

"Does Scum Villain have a teacher/student romance?" And every time I want to answer with: No, But Also Yes, But Also Not Really, It's Complicated (And That's On Purpose.)

Which is an answer that's too long to fit in a tweet or a YT comment, but fortunately tumblr has no (effective) post limit! So here I go.

1 - No

In the very straight forward porn cliche sense of "oh but professor, I really ~need~ to pass this class or my life will be ruined, can't I do ~anything~ to get you to change my grade?" *bats lashes* and "Hoho, my pretty young teen student, I've got your good grade right here in my pants, if you ~apply~ yourself..." then no.

No sex or romance between a teacher and their student in the bounds of a teacher-student relationship happens in this book. No deliberate grooming of an underage student on the part of a teacher occurs in this book. No sex or a romance between an adult character and an underage character occurs in this book, nor is the adult 'waiting' for the minor to reach adulthood to initiate one.

2 - But Also Yes

No sex or romance between a teacher and their student in the bounds of that relationship happens in this book. Two people who were formerly in a teacher and student relationship do enter into a sexual and romantic relationship by the end of the book. Also the nature of the society they're in further means that even though they are no longer in the schooling environment, it is socially assumed that the deference owed by a student to their teacher lasts forever, even after the student leaves that environment, and they continue to regard themselves and refer to themselves in those roles even though the teacher no longer strictly speaking has authority over the student.

Also, the student was really hot for his teacher even when he was still a student. (The teacher was oblivious to this fact.)

3 - But Also Not Really

By the time sex and romance is even on the horizon for these characters, their relationship has so drastically changed from that of a "teacher and student" that it is barely recognizeable as such. The power/authority dynamic between a teacher and their student is subsumed pretty much entirely by the facts that:

A. The 'student' has become a medeival fantasy warlord of such unsurpassable magic and might that literally no other person in this world can stand up against him, 'teacher' included, and the 'teacher' is well aware of that.

B. Also, the 'student' is metaphysically endowed (heh) with the Protagonist Halo, a literally active force within the setting they're part of, which means that not only can he not be defeated, he ontologically cannot be denied anything that he desires; what he wants, he gets, and what he doesn't want, cannot be forced on him.

C. ...But also, the teacher in this setting is a metaphysical outsider to the world order the student is part of, which means that he is aware of all of the above, and can and does manipulate it to suit his own agenda, which may or may not align with giving the student what he wants at any point in time. Assuming that the teacher has the correct understanding of what the student wants. (He doesn't.)

D. ........But also also, for all his power, one harsh word from him can destroy him. For all his knowledge, one tear can devastate him. (Which one? Both.)

4 - It's Complicated (On Purpose)

*throws the chalk against the wall*

Between a teacher and their student, who has the power? Between an emperor and a scholar, who has the power? Between a hero and the villain he is predestined to destroy, who has the power? Between a character and the reader who's read ahead to the end of the story, who has the power? Do we find some of these power imbalances more acceptable than others? And if so, why do we?

Trying to track Who Has The Power or Who Has An Unfair Advantage socially, physically, and metaphysically between this particular pair of characters is damn near impossible and that's on purpose.

The Scum Villain's Self Saving System is a lot of things, but one thing that absolutely defines it is that it is a parody. It's a parody and a deconstruction of a lot of things -- the 'stallion' genre, the 'isekai' genre, the 'pay-per-chapter webnovel' genre, the 'gay drama' genre and, most relevant to this conversation, it is a deconstruction of teacher-student romance.

What kind of a teacher-student romance has a clueless, fish-out-of water NEET in the role of the Wise Old Mentor? What kind of a teacher-student romance has a black-hearted, demonic, domineering feudal warlord in the role of the Blushing Virginal Student? What kind of a teacher-student romance has the two principals so close in age -- by the end of the book, they may be as little as a year apart -- that they're more like peers than teacher and student? What kind of audience are we, going into a story like this one and finding ourselves cheering for the teacher to fall in love and lust with his student, only to be disappointed when that doesn't happen because the teacher fails for three books straight to recognize love and lust when it's literally looking him in the face and crying?

Asking "does Scum Villain have a teacher-student romance?" is sort of like asking "does Galaxy Quest have a lot of high science fiction concepts?" No, but also yes, but also not really. It's complicated, and that's on purpose.